I. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to conveyor systems, and more particularly, to a system for guiding the belt in a conveyor system.
II. Description of the Known Art
Conveyor systems transport goods, packages, cartons and other objects in all types of environments and experience heavy use in the manufacturing and shipping industries. Complex conveyor systems typically require several conveyor lines and lanes that cooperate with one another to transport or sort objects, as well as various peripheral devices that are associated with each conveyor lane (e.g., sensors, solenoids, motors, etc.).
The tracking of a conveyor belt may depend on how the precision with which the belt is manufactured. However, without a tracking mechanism, a conveyor belt will typically track to the left or to the right after usage. The belt may rub against the conveyor system due to the tracking to the left or right. This rubbing often leads to conveyor noise, conveyor belt wear, and conveyor belt failure.
Maintaining the alignment of conveyor webs or belt shaped materials over rollers or pulleys has been a universal problem. Solutions for improving the realignment rate of tracking rollers have not been significant. One approach to solving the problem has been to use some type of limiter to urge the belt in a certain direction once the belt has moved to a limit position. Although this approach can be helpful in quickly correcting a misaligned belt, the limiter can damage the edges of the belt or the material travelling over the rollers. Another approach has been to increase the angle at which the grooves or ribbing are aligned with respect to the circumference of the roller. By increasing the angle at which the helical grooves or ribbing track inward, the speed at which the belt tracks inward can be increased. However, tracking speed can only be increased a limited amount with this approach because once the angle becomes too great the grooves approach being perpendicular to the direction of the belt across the roller, which can result in a loss of all tracking ability.